A booming trade in
aquarium fish, sparked by Finding Nemo, the Disney film featuring clownfish,
is endangering the wildlife of the Vanuatu archipelago in the South Pacific.

The Guardian Newspaper, and
a recent ABC Foreign Corrspondent report has hghlighted the decimation
of some of our Pacific Reefs, specifically in Vanuatu, all for the sake
of having your own Nemo' in the living room.

The Guardian Newspper, 20
November 2003 reports:

Over the past yearabout 200,000
fish and other marine creatures have been exported from the country, and
local tour firms are warning that the reefs will be at risk if the tropical
fish trade is not regulated.

"It's a very popular trade
and on the back of Finding Nemo it's boomed," said Heidi Bartram, of Vanuatu's
fisheries department. "It's developing faster than anyone can keep up with.
There's a lack of understanding of reef systems and how fast they recover.
Understanding them is hard enough without having the added pressure of
people taking the fish."

Concern about the trade and
its sustainability is so great the government has set up a committee to
examine the issue. The four species of anenome fish in Vanuatu - which
are related to, but do not include, the clownfish - are classified within
the archipelago's top 10 most exported species.

Concern has grown among local
dive firms following the arrival, in April, of a US-owned company, Sustainable
Reef Supplies, which employs 20 people to fish the waters around Vanuatu's
main island, Efate, and which dominates the export market. The firm flies
out up to 8,000 wild animals a month from the capital, Port Vila. Rare
tropical fish can fetch more than £300 an animal in the US and Australian
markets, although clownfish can sell for £10.

Rod Habla, president of the
Vanuatu tour operators' association, said aquarium firms had to ensure
sites were not overfished. "The problem is managers will tell collectors
not to go into restricted areas but at the same time give them a list of
the species they want."

Dive operators say that aquarium
firms have over-fished several popular scuba sites, including Hat Island
where they claim 38,000 fish were taken within one month this year.

Local businesses pay custom
fees to traditional, Melanesian landowners for the rights to fish or dive.
According to the United Nations, the global aquarium trade deals in eleven
million tropical fish a year, with Britain alone importing 110,000 clownfish
annually.

The ABC's excellent Foreign
Correspondent program, reporter Mark Corcoran, broadcast 9 November 2004,
had as its lead story, the devastation of Vanuatu's reefs.

---- a trade accused
of exploitation, overfishing and corruption. The United Nations Environmental
Program estimates that globally, 20 million tropical fish worth nearly
$500 million are now caught each year.Nearly all Vanuatu's tropical fish
are caught by a company called Sustainable Reef Supplies (SRS)  which
was established in Vanuatu by American businessmen. Yet in three short
years, SRS has managed to alienate tourism operators who depend on tropical
fish as an attraction, scientists who fear an ecological disaster in the
making  and traditional owners of the reefs where the tropical fish live.

Corcoran meets one custom
reef owner Chief Mor Mor, who gets paid just $120 a month by SRS for the
right to unlimited access to his reefs. He figures it's better than
nothing. Yet a former SRS manager, James Armitage says that SRS collects
$5,000 worth of fish in a single morning on Chief Mor Mor's reef. And he
says that last year, SRS decided it wanted an immediate tenfold increase
in production, and brought in ten Filipino divers to catch the fish.

"They are like machines"
he says "and they just take anything and everything. It's out of control
basically it's a free for all". Vanuatu's Fisheries Department is
supposed to monitor the trade, but accused of corruption and indifference,
does virtually nothing.

Tropical fish are almost
worth their weight in gold  yet Vanuatu's Government officially receives
a pittance from SRS. For each exotic flame angel fish that sells for $80
in Australia or the US  Vanuatu will receive just 24 cents.

James Armitage claims thousands
of dollars a week in bribes were paid when SRS set up operations  the
price he says of doing business in Vanuatu. "The actual fellow
who came to set up SRS was blatant about it  and was willing to offer
it  in his words that's how we did it in Fiji, that's how we did it in
Indonesia  we'll do it here" says James Armitage.

Take away the tropical fish
from this delicate eco system and there are fears the eating fish  on
which Pacific Island communities depend for survival  will also disappear.
A just completed scientific study by environmental group Reef Check in
conjunction with scientists from Townsville's James Cook University
suggests that SRS operations have already had a significant impact on fish
numbers, with a 50% reduction in tropical fish numbers on reefs that have
been harvested.

Vanuatu's Fisheries officials
deny the corruption allegations and say the industry is under control.
But with few resources and even less willpower it's hard to see how they
can justify those claims.

===

A few more thoughts.

It is difficult to find anything
on the company Sustainable Reef Supplies. I believe it is a subsidiary
of a company based in Miami but that is as far as it gets. Any criticim
of SRS must be tempered with condemntion for the authorities in Vanuatu
for allowing such a situation to exist. It appars that SRS is "doing nothing
illegal", and when so much profit is at stake, moral judgemens go out the
window - are they to be blamed for the destruction of the reefs when the
goverments allow them to do it. Corcoran in Foreign Correspondent doesn't
mind using th "corruption" several times, and anyone having professional
dealings in Vanuatu and Idonesia may well know what he is talking about.

Back in the mid-eighties,
I dived in the harbour at Port Vila, on a reef that was popularly known
as Anemone City. I have never in thirty years of diving on tropical reefs
seen such a reef - covered, every inch of it, in anemone and their resident
clownfish. The site no longer exists. I am not suggesting that indiscriminate
collection resulted in its destruction as I have no facts to back this
up, but it is fair to say that any indiscriminate clearance of all animals
such as the sedentary clownfish would have an effect on the reef, and as
mentioned, on the sustainability of the tourist industry. Note also that
the destruction as reported in the Guardian and on Foreign Correspondent
is on reefs close to Port Vila, not on some remote islan hundreds of kilometres
from any tourist or indigenous population (and even if it were, this would
still not be acceptble).

So, if you must have Nemo
in th lounge room, or indeed any tropical fish that has not been bred in
captivity, please think again.